Sutil started from his worst qualifying position of the year so far – 13th – yet managed to score points.

He was at a loss to explain his poor qualifying performance after going well in final practice:

This morning the car felt really good and I could push on both the prime and the option tyres, and it showed in the time I was able to do. But in Q2 I had a clean lap but the grip just didn’t seem to be there.

Over the whole session it was so hard and we couldn’t get the tyres to work – such a big difference from the morning session. It’s obviously very disappointing as we looked very strong here and we didn’t change much from this morning.Adrian Sutil

His good result in the race was partly thanks to the safety car, as he gained four places during the pit stops. But he also made one of the few passes of the race.

Sutil capitalised on a small mistake by Sebastien Buemi to draw alongside at the outside of turn 12 and muscle his way past, the pair briefly interlocking wheels.

This not only got him ahead of Buemi, it also meant he was able to inherit a place from Kamui Kobayashi when the Sauber driver pitted, and keep his place ahead of Fernando Alonso when Sutil was handed a five-second penalty after the race.

All-but matched Sutil in qualifying but lost time queueing up in the pit lane behind his team mate. He was also held up by Vitaly Petrov:

It was a shame we couldn’t make more of the safety car as Adrian did but basically we came in at the same time and as he was ahead on the road he was stopped in front of me and I had to wait for him to finish and then I got blocked by Petrov in the pitlane. That basically compromised my race.Vitantonio Liuzzi

The stewards decided the incident “required no further action”.

Liuzzi spent the rest of the race behind Nico Rosberg and finished ahead of Felipe Massa on the row. But he was later demoted to 16th after getting the five-second penalty as Sutil for going too quickly on the approach to the pits under the safety car.